1/4/2019

We’re not even a full week into the new year and it looks like DUMB is already defining 2019. I’m annoyed, too, because I spent a ridiculous amount of time scouring the internet for those alleged evil Republicans/center-right/conservatives supposedly hating on everybody’s “lovable but earnestly dumb niece” because of a fun dance video that was posted on Twitter yesterday. Posted by some dope who apparently wanted to stir the pot, hoping a bunch of judgmental, tsk-tsking, repressed troglodytes on the right side of the aisle would point long, bony fingers of judgment because a college kid had some fun. (Like we never shook it with carefree abandon when that perfect beat pounded in our ears and we were on the eve of our lives.) Except, I couldn’t find any troglodytes criticizing her for the video. Instead, I found people on the right giving her a happy thumbs-up, while making fun of the individual who posted the video. Yet from the left side of the aisle came unfounded accusations that those on the right were attacking the congresswoman. There was no proof offered. Just a lot of indignant blathering. But we know the game: perception is everything. If it can be pushed hard enough into the collective mind, spread throughout the interwebs from “credible” sources, then it must be true.

Via Dan Jordan, here is the video of AOC, released by AnonymousQ, and captioned “Here is America’s favorite commie-know-it-all acting like the clueless nitwit she is…High School video of “Sandy” Ocasio-Cortez:

Today Ocasio-Cortez demonstrated that, although a novice, she knows how this game is played. In a clever tweet, she didn’t just hit the Twitter user that posted the video, but instead she threw the entire GOP (Republicans/center-right/conservatives) into one big monolithic basket of deplorables as she poked back at the imagined outrage. That’s why she lost me. Well, that and her policy positions. She may hold pie-in-the-sky views that I think are just silly, but credit due: she is a quick study when it comes to understanding how optics and perception work in politics, and how far they can take you:

“She has a freshman, incoming individual that uses that type of language that has a determination of what she’s going to do with no facts or basis,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Friday at a press conference. “I think this is a role as a leader and Speaker to have a conversation with this member on whether she approves of this or not.”

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) didn’t specify what type of disciplinary action he thinks should be taken, but said the language needs to be addressed by Democratic leaders.

“She’s got to make that decision. I’m surely not one to tell Nancy Pelosi what to do, but I think it’s a real test for her, how she responds to this. And it will continue happening if she doesn’t address the problem,” he told reporters Friday. “How was she going to stand up to the most radical-left elements of her party when they become unhinged? And it didn’t take long. Literally, on the first day it happened. That’s going to be a test for her and her Speakership.”

“I probably have a generational reaction to it,” Pelosi told MSNBC’s Joy Reid when asked her response to the comments. “But in any event, I’m not in the censorship business.”

“I don’t think that — I mean, I don’t like that language. I wouldn’t use that language,” Pelosi said. “I don’t, again, establish any language standards for my colleagues. But I don’t think it’s anything worse than what the president has said.”

(Other Democrats publicly called out the freshman for both her language and talk about impeachment. They include John Lewis, Emanuel Cleaver, and Jerry Nadler.)

All in all though, it’s pretty funny when you consider who the GOP members complaining about Tlaib’s language supported in the 2016 election. Yeah, this guy:

1. I have other things to worry about besides politics, and even policy. I’ve accepted back in 2016 that I lost, and will continue to lose no matter which party is in power. Now I’m just bracing myself for the inevitable implosion.

As for Alexandria (did you know it means “repels men”?), she will lose the next primary. It’s New York city, not Berkeley. She caught the Dem establishment by surprise this time, but in 2020 they’ll take the trouble to stuff the ballot boxes.

Upon spotting a veteran political reporter in the crowd and pointing him out to his running mate, Dick Cheney, as the two stood at the podium waving to the assembled crowd, Bush said, “There’s Adam Clymer, major-league asshole from The New York Times.”

Today Trump claimed he will seize large swaths of land from private citizens at gunpoint and declare a “state of emergency” to build a wall without Congressional approval.
In the face of tyranny, Republicans are outraged … by a freshman Member of Congress using profanity.

This is almost certainly our adorable niece in college, not high school. She’s wearing her BU gear (snugly fit, not that I noticed) and that’s the Boston and Cambridge skylines behind her. I saw this video months ago and I think it was claimed to be from her senior year in college.

Heh! If Trump was not all bluff and no balls, he would have “seized large swaths of land from private citizens at gunpoint and declared a ‘state of emergency’ to build a wall without Congressional approval”, when he had both houses of Congress. But it’s good to see that his opponents take his bullsh!t as seriously as his supporters.

Been thinking so hard
She’s punching her card
Eight hours for what?
Oh, tell me what she got
She got this feeling
Teh Man’s just holding her down
She’ll hit the ceiling
Or else she’ll tear up this town
Now she gotta cut loose
Footloose, kick off the Manolo pumps
Please, Louise, foolin’ all of those chumps
Crack, it’s whack, got some rocks in her sack
Lose your blues, everybody cut her loose

I did unfortunately come across some Republican/Conservative/Trump-supporters(IDK how they’d style themselves) being unfortunate about AOC’s dancing in the comments on a conservative website that would probably best not be mentioned here, so they do exist.

Tlaib flinging red meat to her audience isn’t any better than anyone else doing it. You can’t impeach someone just because you don’t like them very much.

humanizing Palestinians
The term is usually a code phrase for dehumanizing Israelis.

I would submit that as long as Palestinians opt for terrorism and refusal to live in peace with Israelis in some format, one state or two state–which refusal has been their base position since 1948–they dehumanize themselves.

But it’s good to see that his opponents take his bullsh!t as seriously as his supporters.

He’s the Leader of the World. All his words and tweets represent the policies and goals of the United States government, if or until he takes them back. We don’t get the luxury of deciding which of his comments are ignorable bulls**t and which we’re supposed to pay to attention to. They’re all relevant. When he says, “Iran can do what they want” in Syria, the easy assumption is that the mullahs are actually listening and may very well heed his words.

Despite her attractiveness I dont find anything particularly amusing about aoc, at best she is merely ignorant at worse her mindset is dangerous to the republic as currently constituted. So you have to wonder who was really behind this squirrel move.

Yes, possibly the shortest duration house majority under one party evah.

The record is held by both the GOP (1881, 1889, 1847, 1953) and the Whigs* (1825, 1841, 1847 and 1855) at one session each time. Up to now the Democrats have never been held to one session, even going back to the Democrat-Republican Party.

—–
* The “Whigs” can refer to the pro-Adams National Republicans that split off from the Jackson wing, or the later anti-Jackson NRs, or the formal Whig party as it was called after Jackson left office.

Ocasio-Cortez is my mother’s favorite Democrat. It is somewhat surprising that my mother, who is an ultra-hard-right, lifelong Republican, would express affection for any Democrat, especially a democratic socialist, but she likes Ocasio-Cortez. She calls her “happy stupid.” In other words, my mother thinks this young woman is stupid beyond belief, but delights in how happy she is in her stupidity.

The thing is, if the Propaganda Arm of the Democrat Party (AKA the Mainstream Media) can sell the narrative that all Republican criticism of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortz is meanspirieted and irrelevant, then they don’t have to defend what she actually says. Which will be a good thing for them, since what she says on political subjects makes me wonder how she graduated from Kindergarten, much less College.

His spell check failed. Now do you care to respond to the substance of his remarks, that the media is trying to make any critique of the kooky niece off limits, or are you here to just play grammar and tone police?

It wasn’t an attack on his spelling, it was a comparison between him moaning that the “Mainstream Media” is calling attacks on her meanspirited, and then him following up calling Ocasio-Cortez too dumb to graduate Kindergarten. There was no substance to his remarks. Plus the inherent comedy of someone in the party of Donald “Stable Genius” Trump calling anyone else dumb.

Father O’Malley rose from his bed one morning. It was a fine spring day
in his new west Texas mission parish. He walked to the window of his bedroom to
get a deep breath of the beautiful day outside. He then noticed there was
a jackass lying dead in the middle of his front lawn. He promptly called
the local police station.

“Good morning. This is Sergeant Jones. How might I help you?”

“And the best of the day te yerself. This is Father O’Malley at St. Ann ‘s
Catholic Church. There’s a jackass lying dead in me front lawn and would
ye be so kind as to send a couple o’yer lads to take care of the matter?”

Sergeant Jones, considering himself to be quite a wit and
recognizing the foreign accent, thought he would have a
little fun with the good father, replied, “Well now Father,
it was always my impression that you people took care of the last rites!”

There was dead silence on the line for a long moment……

Father O’Malley then replied: “Aye,’tis certainly true; but we are also obliged
to notify the next of kin first, which is the reason for me call.”

I didn’t detect this level of tolerance from a devout Christian tea party candidate, eight years in fact everything including the kitchen sink was thrown at her here, in part because of her awkward testimony about her youth, but crew fed the narrative, which was swallowed whole here,

1989 republicans 13 house members were women. democrats 16 house members were women. 2019 republicans 13 house members are women. democrats 90 house members are women. that is why pictures of republican congress are almost all men.

My dude, I’m quoting the President. Donald “Shutdown” Trump
“Russia used to be the Soviet Union. Afghanistan made it Russia, because they went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan,” Mr. Trump said. “The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there.”

in south florida, they could have had maria Salazar, who is one of the most ethical reporters and commentators, instead they went for the troll Shalala, in south Carolina, they went after Arrington, who was recovering from a severe auto accident, they don’t call it the war on women, when republicans are involved, fancy that,

so of course, 60 minutes puts on their pom poms for aoc, pushing her 32 trillion dollar agenda, which is charitable the way these programs have been budgeted, but she gets the glee guest star cover treatment,

Dustin, in particular was going on and over, how corrupt she could possibly be, heck she might with the establishment or even the democrats, where is the anger now, rhetorical,

narciso (d1f714) — 1/5/2019 @ 12:26 pm

Oh I don’t really have any anger about politics these days, and I don’t talk about them much. O’Donnell hustled the Tea party, but she’s irrelevant. It’s not like Obamacare or the wall or the deficit would be a lick different had she pulled it off, so why worry about it? You worry about it because an injustice was done to her, and I truly understand that drive to right what’s wrong, but in politics, it’s all wrong, and the fight doesn’t balance anything.

Meanwhile it is a truly magnificent day.

I don’t have time to worry about the Mitt vs Trump thing, or this viral marketing campaign for this freshman democrat lady. I can’t imagine arguing about it would be as nice as sipping this beer in my backyard. My apologies if years ago my passion about this stuff got under your skin, and if I could remind time, I would never have even cared, I assure you.

I don’t care if she dances until she drops–I do care about her nutty proposals regarding taxes, some kind of green program, and just about every idea she has. It would be funny, however, there are enough nuts on the left to support her crazy ideas, and that’s what is so frightening about her. And, of course, the main stream media can’t get enough of her.

Oh I don’t really have any anger about politics these days, and I don’t talk about them much. O’Donnell hustled the Tea party, but she’s irrelevant. It’s not like Obamacare or the wall or the deficit would be a lick different had she pulled it off, so why worry about it? You worry about it because an injustice was done to her, and I truly understand that drive to right what’s wrong, but in politics, it’s all wrong, and the fight doesn’t balance anything.

Meanwhile it is a truly magnificent day.

I don’t have time to worry about the Mitt vs Trump thing, or this viral marketing campaign for this freshman democrat lady. I can’t imagine arguing about it would be as nice as sipping this beer in my backyard. My apologies if years ago my passion about this stuff got under your skin, and if I could remind time, I would never have even cared, I assure you.

It’s always good to see you. My goal is to write posts that would garner interaction from you and people like you.

“Mitt Romney refers to unwavering support for a finance-based economy and an internationalist foreign policy as the “mainstream Republican” view. And he’s right about that. For generations, Republicans have considered it their duty to make the world safe for banking, while simultaneously prosecuting ever more foreign wars. Modern Democrats generally support those goals enthusiastically.

There are signs, however, that most people do not support this, and not just in America. In countries around the world — France, Brazil, Sweden, the Philippines, Germany, and many others — voters are suddenly backing candidates and ideas that would have been unimaginable just a decade ago. These are not isolated events. What you’re watching is entire populations revolting against leaders who refuse to improve their lives.

Something like this has been in happening in our country for three years. Donald Trump rode a surge of popular discontent all the way to the White House. Does he understand the political revolution that he harnessed? Can he reverse the economic and cultural trends that are destroying America? Those are open questions.

But they’re less relevant than we think. At some point, Donald Trump will be gone. The rest of us will be gone, too. The country will remain. What kind of country will be it be then? How do we want our grandchildren to live? These are the only questions that matter.

The answer used to be obvious. The overriding goal for America is more prosperity, meaning cheaper consumer goods. But is that still true? Does anyone still believe that cheaper iPhones, or more Amazon deliveries of plastic garbage from China are going to make us happy? They haven’t so far. A lot of Americans are drowning in stuff. And yet drug addiction and suicide are depopulating large parts of the country. Anyone who thinks the health of a nation can be summed up in GDP is an idiot.

The goal for America is both simpler and more elusive than mere prosperity. It’s happiness. There are a lot of ingredients in being happy: Dignity. Purpose. Self-control. Independence. Above all, deep relationships with other people. Those are the things that you want for your children. They’re what our leaders should want for us, and would want if they cared.

But our leaders don’t care. We are ruled by mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule. They’re day traders. Substitute teachers. They’re just passing through. They have no skin in this game, and it shows. They can’t solve our problems. They don’t even bother to understand our problems.

One of the biggest lies our leaders tell us that you can separate economics from everything else that matters. Economics is a topic for public debate. Family and faith and culture, meanwhile, those are personal matters. Both parties believe this.

Members of our educated upper-middle-classes are now the backbone of the Democratic Party who usually describe themselves as fiscally responsible and socially moderate. In other words, functionally libertarian. They don’t care how you live, as long as the bills are paid and the markets function. Somehow, they don’t see a connection between people’s personal lives and the health of our economy, or for that matter, the country’s ability to pay its bills. As far as they’re concerned, these are two totally separate categories.

Social conservatives, meanwhile, come to the debate from the opposite perspective, and yet reach a strikingly similar conclusion. The real problem, you’ll hear them say, is that the American family is collapsing. Nothing can be fixed before we fix that. Yet, like the libertarians they claim to oppose, many social conservatives also consider markets sacrosanct. The idea that families are being crushed by market forces seems never to occur to them. They refuse to consider it. Questioning markets feels like apostasy.

Both sides miss the obvious point: Culture and economics are inseparably intertwined. Certain economic systems allow families to thrive. Thriving families make market economies possible. You can’t separate the two. It used to be possible to deny this. Not anymore. The evidence is now overwhelming. How do we know? Consider the inner cities.

Thirty years ago, conservatives looked at Detroit or Newark and many other places and were horrified by what they saw. Conventional families had all but disappeared in poor neighborhoods. The majority of children were born out of wedlock. Single mothers were the rule. Crime and drugs and disorder became universal.

What caused this nightmare? Liberals didn’t even want to acknowledge the question. They were benefiting from the disaster, in the form of reliable votes. Conservatives, though, had a ready explanation for inner-city dysfunction and it made sense: big government. Decades of badly-designed social programs had driven fathers from the home and created what conservatives called a “culture of poverty” that trapped people in generational decline.

There was truth in this. But it wasn’t the whole story. How do we know? Because virtually the same thing has happened decades later to an entirely different population. In many ways, rural America now looks a lot like Detroit.

This is striking because rural Americans wouldn’t seem to have much in common with anyone from the inner city. These groups have different cultures, different traditions and political beliefs. Usually they have different skin colors. Rural people are white conservatives, mostly.

Yet, the pathologies of modern rural America are familiar to anyone who visited downtown Baltimore in the 1980s: Stunning out of wedlock birthrates. High male unemployment. A terrifying drug epidemic. Two different worlds. Similar outcomes. How did this happen? You’d think our ruling class would be interested in knowing the answer. But mostly they’re not. They don’t have to be interested. It’s easier to import foreign labor to take the place of native-born Americans who are slipping behind.

But Republicans now represent rural voters. They ought to be interested. Here’s a big part of the answer: male wages declined. Manufacturing, a male-dominated industry, all but disappeared over the course of a generation. All that remained in many places were the schools and the hospitals, both traditional employers of women. In many places, women suddenly made more than men.”

A similar thing happened in the UK, in the area called the Midlands many mining and industrial jobs were lost there, many finance and other symbolic analysts gained in London, at the lower end immigrants from south Asia and Africa filled the gap,

But an official for the corporation for public broadcasting, nonetheless,and predated the southern strategy (wholesale party switches were delayed until the latter 80s) or was a near-Carterite. Where do you think he gets the reverence for 70s liberals.

A lot of ignorance in that screed. Carlson Tucker’s. To be expected. A preppie with small “b” bohemian parents and a Swanson frozen food heiress stepmother who has done nothing else all his life except write and talk about things he personally has no experience of.

Ah, the article where I’m a gold-digger who should give up my job (thanks Tucker). I have trouble imagining a world where the Republicans are going to increase the cap gains tax or do much economic social engineering. If he wants that, he should vote democrat.

It’s usually people with nice jobs in the public sector where it’s virtually impossible to get fired or “downsized” and who have nice, fat pensions awaiting them or those who work in education who care little about the have-nots.

One would have to be willfully deaf, dumb and blind not to notice significant problems made worse by the greed, selfishness and attempts to lead America down the path to certain failure where it will cease to exist.

The have-nots in much of this country. If you’re living on either coast or in EPIC FAIL Blue Model Metropolitan areas that will soon be increasing the burden on their citizenry in attempts to keep the unsustainable afloat, don’t look now, your house is on fire.

establishment corporate liberals who are barely hanging on to power to control the leftist democratic base for the deep corporate state are by definition phony hippocrite limousine liberals like the clintons and pelosi. for years conservatives have tried to discredit them and have just about succeeded. after the democrat base sweeps them away and are replaced by ocasio-cortez, rashida talib and the black lives matter who say when conservative run things the police shoot minorities when we get in the police will shoot white conservatives for resisting arrest or they will wish they had.

Point out a glaring untruth, and wait for the fact-free ad homs to begin…

A, as in one, glaring untruth? That essay is so loaded with bullsh!t, you need a backhoe with a front-loader to even begin fisking it. I ask again: What does Carlson Tucker know about working Americans, urban or rural, and where did he learn it?

“
Now, before you applaud this as a victory for feminism, consider the effects. Study after study has shown that when men make less than women, women generally don’t want to marry them. Maybe they should want to marry them, but they don’t. Over big populations, this causes a drop in marriage, a spike in out-of-wedlock births, and all the familiar disasters that inevitably follow — more drug and alcohol abuse, higher incarceration rates, fewer families formed in the next generation.

This isn’t speculation. This is not propaganda from the evangelicals. It’s social science. We know it’s true. Rich people know it best of all. That’s why they get married before they have kids. That model works. But increasingly, marriage is a luxury only the affluent in America can afford.

And yet, and here’s the bewildering and infuriating part, those very same affluent married people, the ones making virtually all the decisions in our society, are doing pretty much nothing to help the people below them get and stay married. Rich people are happy to fight malaria in Congo. But working to raise men’s wages in Dayton or Detroit? That’s crazy.

This is negligence on a massive scale. Both parties ignore the crisis in marriage. Our mindless cultural leaders act like it’s still 1961, and the biggest problem American families face is that sexism is preventing millions of housewives from becoming investment bankers or Facebook executives.

For our ruling class, more investment banking is always the answer. They teach us it’s more virtuous to devote your life to some soulless corporation than it is to raise your own kids.

Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook wrote an entire book about this. Sandberg explained that our first duty is to shareholders, above our own children. No surprise there. Sandberg herself is one of America’s biggest shareholders. Propaganda like this has made her rich.

We are ruled by mercenaries who feel no long-term obligation to the people they rule. They’re day traders. Substitute teachers. They’re just passing through. They have no skin in this game, and it shows.

What’s remarkable is how the rest of us responded to it. We didn’t question why Sandberg was saying this. We didn’t laugh in her face at the pure absurdity of it. Our corporate media celebrated Sandberg as the leader of a liberation movement. Her book became a bestseller: “Lean In.” As if putting a corporation first is empowerment. It is not. It is bondage. Republicans should say so.

They should also speak out against the ugliest parts of our financial system. Not all commerce is good. Why is it defensible to loan people money they can’t possibly repay? Or charge them interest that impoverishes them? Payday loan outlets in poor neighborhoods collect 400 percent annual interest.

We’re OK with that? We shouldn’t be. Libertarians tell us that’s how markets work — consenting adults making voluntary decisions about how to live their lives. OK. But it’s also disgusting. If you care about America, you ought to oppose the exploitation of Americans, whether it’s happening in the inner city or on Wall Street.

And by the way, if you really loved your fellow Americans, as our leaders should, if it would break your heart to see them high all the time. Which they are. A huge number of our kids, especially our boys, are smoking weed constantly. You may not realize that, because new technology has made it odorless. But it’s everywhere.

And that’s not an accident. Once our leaders understood they could get rich from marijuana, marijuana became ubiquitous. In many places, tax-hungry politicians have legalized or decriminalized it. Former Speaker of the House John Boehner now lobbies for the marijuana industry. His fellow Republicans seem fine with that. “Oh, but it’s better for you than alcohol,” they tell us.

Maybe. Who cares? Talk about missing the point. Try having dinner with a 19-year-old who’s been smoking weed. The life is gone. Passive, flat, trapped in their own heads. Do you want that for your kids? Of course not. Then why are our leaders pushing it on us? You know the reason. Because they don’t care about us.

When you care about people, you do your best to treat them fairly. Our leaders don’t even try. They hand out jobs and contracts and scholarships and slots at prestigious universities based purely on how we look. There’s nothing less fair than that, though our tax code comes close.

Under our current system, an American who works for a salary pays about twice the tax rate as someone who’s living off inherited money and doesn’t work at all. We tax capital at half of what we tax labor. It’s a sweet deal if you work in finance, as many of our rich people do.

In 2010, for example, Mitt Romney made about $22 million dollars in investment income. He paid an effective federal tax rate of 14 percent. For normal upper-middle-class wage earners, the federal tax rate is nearly 40 percent. No wonder Mitt Romney supports the status quo. But for everyone else, it’s infuriating.

Our leaders rarely mention any of this. They tell us our multi-tiered tax code is based on the principles of the free market. Please. It’s based on laws that the Congress passed, laws that companies lobbied for in order to increase their economic advantage. It worked well for those people. They did increase their economic advantage. But for everyone else, it came at a big cost. Unfairness is profoundly divisive. When you favor one child over another, your kids don’t hate you. They hate each other.

That happens in countries, too. It’s happening in ours, probably by design. Divided countries are easier to rule. And nothing divides us like the perception that some people are getting special treatment. In our country, some people definitely are getting special treatment. Republicans should oppose that with everything they have.

What kind of country do you want to live in? A fair country. A decent country. A cohesive country. A country whose leaders don’t accelerate the forces of change purely for their own profit and amusement. A country you might recognize when you’re old.

A country that listens to young people who don’t live in Brooklyn. A country where you can make a solid living outside of the big cities. A country where Lewiston, Maine seems almost as important as the west side of Los Angeles. A country where environmentalism means getting outside and picking up the trash. A clean, orderly, stable country that respects itself. And above all, a country where normal people with an average education who grew up in no place special can get married, and have happy kids, and repeat unto the generations. A country that actually cares about families, the building block of everything.

What will it take a get a country like that? Leaders who want it. For now, those leaders will have to be Republicans. There’s no option at this point.

But first, Republican leaders will have to acknowledge that market capitalism is not a religion. Market capitalism is a tool, like a staple gun or a toaster. You’d have to be a fool to worship it. Our system was created by human beings for the benefit of human beings. We do not exist to serve markets. Just the opposite. Any economic system that weakens and destroys families is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society.

Internalizing all this will not be easy for Republican leaders. They’ll have to unlearn decades of bumper sticker-talking points and corporate propaganda. They’ll likely lose donors in the process. They’ll be criticized. Libertarians are sure to call any deviation from market fundamentalism a form of socialism.

That’s a lie. Socialism is a disaster. It doesn’t work. It’s what we should be working desperately to avoid. But socialism is exactly what we’re going to get, and very soon unless a group of responsible people in our political system reforms the American economy in a way that protects normal people.

If you want to put America first, you’ve got to put its families first.”

If you accept Carlson’s argument at face value, it is an argument that America would be better off if women made less than men. I would imagine that his load-bearing premise in this argument is drawn from his personal belief that his wife would not be married to him, but for his money.

For a married couple, the federal tax rate for income between $165k and $315k is 24%. So the effective tax rate for an upper middle class wage earner is no where near 40%. Targeting the super rich is a fool’s errand. They have the resources and flexibility to move their wealth and pay whatever tax rate they choose….we saw this with Perot and bonds. If you want to pay less taxes, then you have to demand less government….smaller entitlements and smaller military.

“But working to raise men’s wages in Dayton or Detroit? That’s crazy.”

How does one work to raise men’s wages specifically…without creating some sort of 14th amendment discrimination problem? If you want to earn more money you need to get more education, obtain specialized skills that are in demand, work hard, and possibly engage in risk. A celebrity cannot do any of these things for you. Also, having a successful marriage is not all about income.

“And nothing divides us like the perception that some people are getting special treatment”

The top 20% of wage earners pay 87% of the income tax. The bottom 50% of wage earners pay less than 3% of the total income tax. The bulk of federal spending is social security, medicare, and the military….not exactly arenas where the rich are bilking benefits. I disagree that class warfare and income redistribution is the best path for the GOP….we already have a party who focuses on these things. The GOP should certainly focus on government policies that discourage marriage and make it harder to raise a family….but government should not be in the business of guaranteeing income levels….and should not be absolving people of any responsibility for paying for the government they already vote for. There’s no magic goose out there laying golden eggs.

One doesn’t need to accept all or even most of what Carlson has written in that piece to understand that a new direction is needed. The sooner the better.

I’ve read that the coming social impacts of several forces – globalization, AI, robotics, etc. – will lead to mass unemployment and attendant problems. Repetitive actions, and tasks that can be mechanized, will be mechanized. Society will need to deal with the impact to what have long been considered stable areas of employment There will have to be strategies developed to mitigate all of this… or else…

“If you accept Carlson’s argument at face value, it is an argument that America would be better off if women made less than men. I would imagine that his load-bearing premise in this argument is drawn from his personal belief that his wife would not be married to him, but for his money.”
Leviticus (ef6845) — 1/6/2019 @ 7:15 am

Then I must’ve married my wife strictly for her looks, since I believe America is better off if women are better looking than men.

I think the question is what should be government’s response to increases in automation and globalization?

The solutions across the political spectrum (but largely progressive) are:
1. Universal subsidy to every American regardless of income or employment;
2. Negative income tax to subsidize under-employment;
3. Government creates stop-gap alternative jobs (think WPA, CCC);
4. Provide greater safety net of universal health care; free college; subsidized child care; longer unemployment compensation;
5. Tax robots or increased automation; Limit through regulation the number of jobs that can be replaced by automation;
6. Re-train workers; Modernize the content and how education is delivered;
7. Targeted investment in employment sectors to create alternative jobs;
8. Incentives (generally tax code) for entrepreneurship and opening small businesses;
9. Cut regulations that make it less attractive to hire humans;
10. Higher tariffs to protect industries being replaced by automation;
11. Compel businesses that displace workers with automation to subsidize those displaced workers for a longer period of time.

The problem I have with this “dire rise of the robots” is why don’t we see repeated cycles of economic distress with the introduction of each new technology? Why are the “robots” uniquely troubling? Part of the answer is that automation lowers the cost of products…increasing purchasing power…leading to new jobs that we might not imagine today. We successfully transitioned from being an agrarian society to an industrial society….now very few farmers use immense technology to feed the world. We didn’t need a universal wage to do that. We should not pay people not to work…and we should not hand over more control of our lives to government and government bureaucracies. The more taxes we willingly hand over to government, the less we are able to chart our own economic path. I’m not saying that all of the 11 above policy directions are bad….but some are really bad.

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